Monday, April 29, 2013

Hey Everyone!

I hope everyone had a great week! This last week has been pretty interesting for us over here. The weather still can't make up its mind though. I actually packed up and put away all my winter gear because it had been really warm and I hadn't used it for several weeks, and then earlier in the week I had to get it back out again because it almost dropped down to freezing for a couple days. It's fun though!

Jose
Comba's front door after we dropped by on his birthday.

He's actually
turning 47, but we were in a rush and somehow

it ended up turning
into a 73... Imagine that! Haha!

So, earlier in the week we went on splits with the Elders in Tsukuba. I went over there with Elder Davis, and it was a pretty normal day. The next morning we had a meeting with the ward mission leader at 6. So, we set the alarm and went to bed. In the morning, the alarm goes off, and we both kinda sorta roll wake up and roll off the futons to pray. All of a sudden, I hear Elder Davis say "Oh no!" Well that's not good... somehow the alarm got messed up, and instead of waking us up at 5, we woke up at 6 when we were supposed to be at the church. Well, that was definitely a good incentive to get moving. I'm pretty sure that's the fastest I've ever gotten up and out the door. We made it to the church at 6:15. Definitely don't want to do that again. What a way to start the day, right?

Elder Miranda had a pretty fun story from that split too. He and Elder Johnson were over by the train station handing out fliers for the free English class we teach every Wednesday Some guy comes up to Elder Miranda and takes the flier, looks down, looks back up at Elder Miranda, and says, "I know who you are. I've seen you on tv. You're wanted. You're the Boston Bomber! I'm not going to this English class, it's a trap! I know what you're really up to!" Um... what? Yeah, this guy was a little nuts. But, he decided to call the police, and the police showed up. They come over and talk with Elder Miranda. They found out what was going on, and they just told him that they received a call about something else, and then left. Pretty crazy, right?

A car we found with a parking spot that is literally only an inch
(maybe) taller than the top of the car.

Later that week we had an appointment with some members. We went over and talked about different ways they can invite their friends to learn more about the gospel. It went really well because one of the daughters has her mission call to the Fukuoka Japan mission, and we had Yamamoto Tasuku come with us who is leaving on his mission to Australia in a couple weeks (assuming his visa comes in time this time). They're both really excited to be going. It was definitely a good opportunity for them to realize how simple and easy it really is to share the gospel. We had planned to go over to a college that's in our area and do some finding over there after the visit, but the weather once again turned on us. What had started as a beautiful clear day had turned cloudy and dark, and it was definitely going to rain. We were on our bikes, and neither of us had rain coats or umbrellas, and it was about a 30 minute bike ride home. If we went all the way out to the college, it would turn into nearly and hour bike ride home. Getting caught in the rain didn't sound so fun, so we had to abandon our plans to go to the college.

Friday night we were back in the apartment, and I was making the nightly calls to the district to see how their day went and make sure they were all safe and in their apartments. While I'm talking with the Tsukuba Elders, Elder Miranda keeps going back and forth from the main room to the extra room, and he keeps grabbing different exercise equipment. I thought that was kinda weird that he would be exercising so late at night, but I didn't say anything. All of a sudden, I hear this really loud noise, and then little bits of glass or plastic or something scattering across the floor. Well that couldn't be good. I ran over to see what happened, and he's just standing there with this really surprised look on his face, with an exercise band in his hand. I look at the floor and one of his... Ok, I'm really not sure what you call it, but it's for doing push ups. It's a bar shaped like a U, and you use two of them, one under each hand, when you do push ups to get a wider range of motion. Anyways, one of these things was on the ground in pieces. I had no idea what happened, but he's standing there with this exercise band, and his push up thing is sitting on the ground broken, and I just heard things rocketing around in the room. I start laughing uncontrollably, and he starts explaining what happened. Apparently he was experimenting with different ways to use the exercise equipment, and he decided to thread the exercise band under the push up thing and then stand on the base to pin in to the ground and do bicep curls with it. I'm really not sure why he didn't just stand on the band instead of trying to thread it through this push up thing. But it doesn't end there! Over the course of the next 3 minutes while I was in there, he managed to snap himself with the band twice while he was playing with it. Poor guy. Haha!

That's about it for the week. Hope you all have a great week this week! More later!

Elder Blake

PS I have an amendment to the vitamin drink recipe from last week. If you try this, use only half an apple. If you use a whole apple, it doesn't turn out very well. Trust me...